THE VOLUNTEER

A federal antipoverty worker finds his job on the line with the arrival of a new boss.

Michael Napolitano works as at the Survival Center, a service agency that provides food and goods to local low-income families in rural Massachusetts. Despite earning wages so low that he jokingly refers to himself as a volunteer, Napolitano enjoys his job and finds the work rewarding. With the arrival of new executive director Mr. Prince, however, Napolitano soon discovers an ugly side of the nonprofit world. In addition to being completely ambivalent to the center’s philanthropic goals, Prince reeks of cheap cologne and eagerly throws around racial slurs. When Prince refuses to give bread to an elderly woman who arrives after the official closing time, the situation sparks a heated confrontation between Prince and Napolitano that ultimately leads to the director firing Napolitano. Shocked by his rapid dismissal, Napolitano struggles to maintain normalcy by starting a new job, discussing politics with his friends and pursuing an unlikely romance with a beautiful woman. Finally he seeks the advice of Sarah, the beloved former director at the center, and discovers a nefarious secret about Prince’s past. While the book accurately depicts the disparities that can arise between nonprofit workers and the bureaucrats financing them, it reduces these characters to two-dimensional caricatures. As a sarcastic Italian-American with a stutter and a soft spot for doughnuts, Napolitano makes for a likable hero, but his inability to communicate reasonably with bosses and board members he dislikes is unrealistic and would result in any employee being fired. Similarly, the book contains cartoonishly evil villains who seem bent on closing or relocating the center for no apparent reason. By the time Napolitano enlists the help of a cowboy from the West Coast to rough up the director and restore order to the center, readers will have already drifted from the increasingly ridiculous plot.

Begins with promise, but characters are reduced to clichés by overly simplistic conflicts.